Alien abduction

I never believed those crazy UFO nuts ‘till just a couple weeks ago. I never thought something like this could be real.

It all started one late night as I was headed home after visiting some friends that lived across town. I apparently took a wrong turn, and soon didn’t know any of the landmarks around me. I was looking for a familiar area so I could find my way back, when suddenly this bright light snapped on and blinded me momentarily.

They must have come over to me while I was dazed, because next thing I knew they were carrying me onto this shiny vehicle with strange, flashing lights on it. I couldn’t understand them at all, and I don’t think they could understand me, even though they seemed to have a translating device. It would talk in their language at random times, and both of them would stop and listen, then look at me.

Their bodies were a lot larger than ours, and I think they breathed a different atmosphere than we do, because before they actually put me in their ship, they stuck this smelly tube in my face. But I think now it was so I could breathe in their atmosphere because there was this little machine with lots of lights on it attached to the tube. I figure it put some little doo-dad in my lungs or something.

They also had some kind of force field that separated us, probably to protect us from each others germs, but I
could still smell them.

Then we took off. After a short and bumpy ride, we evidently arrived at the mother ship, because there were a bunch of
these pointy-headed aliens all over. I think they must have drugged me and done some kind of examination on me, cause I remember being stuck in the arm with a needle, and now I’m kind of sore in some bad places to be sore. And I think I had a seizure or something because my elbows and knees were all dinged up, and my face hurt a lot.

I've thought a lot about it, and I think I figured it out. The aliens test new drugs on people then just dump them somewhere for the cops to find, naked and confused, cause I woke up the next day in jail with bandages on me. The judge stiffed me, too. So not only did I get all bunged up with some stupid aliens, but I had to pay a $50 drunk and disorderly charge, and now they got me in some program where I don’t get to go outside by myself.

You may know that the obsession with aliens is culturally and historically specific, and that the frequency of alleged alien abductions has increased dramatically in the west in this century. Other cultures are more frequently prey to different classes of strange occurences. In Thailand, it's ghosts. Thai people get possessed or haunted by ghosts all the time, and stories about ghosts are featured prominently in sensationalist rags and urban lore. Such was true much more frequently in the last century in Europe and North America, too; now, however, it's aliens.

One day I was watching one of those animal documentaries on the Discovery Channel. You know the ones: lovely nature photography of animals eating, fighting, fucking, and birthing, interspersed with shots of earnest zoologists shooting innocent animals with darts that will put them to sleep (if they're lucky) or temporarily paralyze them (if they're not), and then punching holes in their ears to attach plastic tags to, or putting huge radio collars on them, and taking blood samples and skin samples and god knows what else. I'm sure one or two of those poor beasts has been subjected to an anal probe in the name of science....Does any of this seem familiar at all? It did to me.

And so I began to wonder: Could it be that the rash of alien abductions that has plagued the western world is a manifestation of our guilty collective unconscious, subjecting us in our imaginations to the same treatment we mete out to wild animals? Or could it be that we are tapping into the animal world's traumatized collective memory of their frightening treatment at our hands?

I want to tell you how I feel, but I can't.I want to say what I mean, but you stop me.I can't hide anything from you, but you act like you don't know. I want to run away. You'd find me. You're inside me.A parasitic mind.My DNA.I want to cut you out of me but I can't.Because without youI'd die.But what scares me most isI thinkI'm

Goldberg had been my dad's best friend. They had grown up together in La Guardia's New York. He has the same city mannerisms my father had so when he lowers his chin and pierces the air between us with his glare I feel one of my father's lectures coming on.

"We don't call it crazy," he says. "You have a perfectly common, absolutely curable disorder. Would you worry so much if you had the flu? It's nothing to be ashamed of."

"Let's go back to the beginning," I say and Goldberg sighs, slumps in his chair, and looks at the brown water stain on his ceiling tile. His basement office is still pungent with the smell of mold and damp concrete from the last time his sump pump gave out during a thunderstorm.

Goldberg sits up and puts his sagging elbows on the desk between us. We both know what we both know. I can't afford the publicity risk seeing someone else, and anyway, I can't talk to anyone else about this. He is my uncle Benny, the shrink. The jewish uncle every italian boy needs.

When I apologize he says, "Yeah, you'd better be sorry," and he gets up and pulls a stuffed green file folder from a beat up beige cabinet next to the wall.

He says, "You got time to read something, mister Fortune 500--I've been on the cover of 'Time' so I'm too busy to come see my aunt Ruth? You know you're like a son to us. You could stop by once in a while."

Suddenly, I'm fourteen again begging for a quarter to buy baseball cards. I hear myself whine, "Geeze Uncle Benny..." as he hands me single-spaced, manually-typed manuscript that's held together by a thick steel staple on the upper left corner. The paper's dirty and the type's smudged.

The title page is torn. I leaf through the fifty or so pages seeing endless margin notes in a variety of colored inks. Some sentences have been highlighted, words circled. There are names and addresses on the blank backs of the pages.

"That nearly got my license revoked," Benny says, plopping into his seat behind his desk. "The AMA accepted it for 'Clinical Psychology', then kept pushing out the publication date. After a couple of years, I figured, what the hell, and I sent it to 'Psychology Today'. They accepted it, sent me the check, then demanded it back. They never printed it. Nobody ever printed it. Bet your old man never told you about that--did he?"

My uncle holds out his hand and I give him the paper. He pages through the folio, and then finding what he wants, holds it up toward me with his finger on a paragraph. "Read from here."

When we asked Kevin why he'd discontinued his pharmacutical regime, he replied he'd been instructed to by Garin. Kevin reasoned that if Garin was indeed a character from his delusion, the drugs were not helping and the fact his delusion was able to issue instructions was indication the medicine was ineffective. If Garin was not part of the hallucination, then listening to his suggestions may have some longer term merit.

Kevin then produced an artifact and presented it to us. He said it was a gift from Garin and that we should accept it as a token of the good will from the people of the planet Cethius.

As with prior artifacts, we were requested to turn it over to the FBI who were happy to provide us with analyses that showed the metallic medallion to be machined from a copper beryllium alloy identical to those used by the U.S. Department of Defense. The FBI told us the material had been stolen from the manufacturing plant in Mississippi that had employed Kevin.

When presented with the evidence Kevin could remember neither his employment in the strategic weapons program nor the incident surrounding the theft.

"What the hell am I reading?"

"Nicky..."

I apologize. "But I don't get it. The company's never had anything to do with government contract work."

"I can help you Nicky," says my uncle, "But I can't do it alone. You have to try."

"You're not getting through it, Nick," she said, slamming the car into drive. She pulled us out into traffic without looking. Behind us, a car horn sounded and tires squealed.

It didn't add and I went on not caring. Something inside me told me I should care, but I didn't. Simple things were falling through cracks. Easy things were overlooked. By me. It was me falling and overlooking and being careless.

How could that be? She could have just come with me, and Benny would have seen her.

I'm in a bright room, so white it seems infinite, the ceiling melts into the walls melts into the floor.

And then suddenly, a deep black line appears in front of me, side to side, splitting the white, creating two directions where before there was nothing. First a thread, it grows wide. Then it consumes the space in front of me. Within the dark rectangle are flecks as if the white void has crumbled at the edges, leaving a universe of stars in the black.

"My car. In my car.""Ok. You're in your car. Where are you driving, Nick?"(pause)"Out...out by Bloomsbury. On seventy-eight. Between the towns where it's...""Where it's what?"Can you see how bright that frigging light is? What the hell does he think he's doing?""We can't see it, Nick. What do you see?""How the hell can you not see that? There's a goddamned seven-forty-seven landing on the highway. What the hell is that? Goddamn it. Look out. Hold on. Some asshole's going the wrong way on the highway."(grunts)"Nick. Nick. Nick, what's happening?""God-fucking-damn it, motherfucker ran me off the road. Shithead!""What ran you off the road?""Is there something wrong with you? You mean to tell me you didn't see that huge orange light thing--holy shit. It's coming back. Goddamn. I'm getting out of here.""It's okay. Nick. Listen to me. It's not happening now. It's not happening. We can turn it off.""Shit. Fucking car won't start. Holy shit. It's right behind me."Nick. What's behind you? What do you see?""I gotta get out of here. I gotta get out. Please--

I take the paperweight off Benny's desk. It's the piece of lucite with a redwood tree branch embedded inside. Hefts well in the hand.

It puts a hole in the dark wood paneling on the walls in Benny's basement office.

"Did you do that for a reason?" Benny asks.

"Did you ever feel like you couldn't feel anything anymore?"

Benny answers my question with silence. I know the trick. He's trying to get me to talk.

"Well, did you?"

"Nicky," he holds up his palms.

And then I let it go for a second and I remember. I allow myself to think of a tiny piece of it. The orange light. The hands. The eyes. The pain.

I hold my index finger to the roof of my eye socket. That's where the pain is. It still hurts. I tell myself it doesn't, but it does. Never stopped. All so I could see them better, they said. And all I did was scream.

"They stuck a long, thin rod, right here," I say. "I couldn't move. I could hear my skull cracking when they forced it in. It crunched, like biting an apple. They put something in my brain. It hurt so much I cried."

He props his elbow on the passenger's side window ledge and rubs his forehead. "We gotta do something. Koyama's pulling his business. You freaked him out."

"Did I freak you out?" I say, and I turn automatically. My body is on autopilot. My mind is not engaged. The car will wind up where it always winds up this time of night. This time Barry will be with me.

"Well, no, but--"

"Did you see the lights? Did anybody? We've got a man who stands up in the middle of a business meeting claiming there are talking, flying, globes of light in the conference room and you think I'm the problem?"

Barry looks at me as if I've burst into flames. "Ever since your accident, things haven't been the same. I don't know how to explain it. But we all see it. Everyone seems to see it except you."

I interrupt him, "Always some excuse you guys have for not doing something as simple as turning your head or coming outside or answering the phone when she calls. Always one of your reasons for not looking up. Look up. Look right now."

Her silhouette, in the front window.

I allow my self to think. I allow myself to think--I got you, you bitch.

It makes her come outside. The front door opens and she steps out, graceful as a cloud on Kilamanjaro.

"She won't hurt you," I say, when Darla comes to the passenger's side. She leans over, peers inside as I lower Barry's window.

And Barry screams. His body stiffens as if jolted by lightening. But that's himself doing it to himself. He's never been this afraid before. His body needs to learn.

His eyes roll backward in their sockets. His screams stifle by the constriction in his throat so that now his howl turns to a squeak turns to a gurgle as his brain is denied oxygen.

"It's okay," I tell him. It's like being born. Traumatic, but you don't remember it.

Darla says, "You tricked me. I didn't know you had him in the car. That's pretty good. I'm impressed."

"I have a great teacher," I tell her. "Should I take Barry home, or will you?"

"I will. You've had a hard day."

She touches Barry's forehead and he falls asleep. I know from experience, it will be the best sleep he's had since he was an infant.

***

"What do you think it is?" I ask my uncle Benny.

"If I knew the answer to that, I'd probably win a Nobel Prize," he says. He kisses Darla on the forehead and then hugs me. "You two make a beautiful couple. I wish Ruth could see this."

"She knows," Darla says, and kisses Benny on the cheek. Then we leave his office.

Inside her BMW I ask her, "Does this have anything to do with the evolution of the human race? Maybe it's the end of the world like that Arthur C. Clarke book. The aliens come down and take all the children and the sun swallows the planet."

The abductees featured in the book describe their abductors as grey aliens, a type which used to be commercially ubiquitous in a stylized (pointy-chinned, big-eyed, dot-nostrilled) form, albeit typically misrepresented as a uniform neon green, hot pink, or other skaterz r00l color. Grey aliens bear a startling resemblance to Morgan Fairchild.

The physical exam always a) moves from toe-to-head instead of head-to-toe, and b) features a genital/anal exam.

The physical exam is usually described in perfunctory terms, while the examination of the nether bits is narrated in highly descriptive pseudoclinical terms. Abductees frequently report the removal of ova or sperm as the conclusion of the exam.

If the abductee becomes extremely agitated, the alien referred to as "the doctor" enters the room. This alien is taller than the others, and is described as having a more forceful or convincing personality. "The doctor" plays the roles of anesthesiologist and comforter, and appears to abductees as somehow wiser or superior in status to the smaller grey aliens.

The abductee may also report the removal of a tissue sample, typically a thin strip, circular scoop, or wedge-shaped divot taken from the back, or the back of the leg.

Abductees find that they have been returned to their prior location after the abduction, most often with no immediate recollection of the experiences. They may realize that anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours has elapsed, and that they have no recollection of this time passing.

3. Philosophy

There are three popular camps which address the alien abduction experience ideologically:

Trauma: Many professionals in the mental health field advocate for treatment of abductees as survivors of abuse. Adherents to abduction trauma theory believe that accounts of alien abduction are narrative masks - internal metaphors - for the childhood experience of sexual abuse.